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Post offices across the country to accept digital payments soon


Representative image.
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Even as India Post phases out its ‘Registered Post’ and merges it with Speed Post, the Department of Posts has indicated that it will firm up its logistics for transmitting mail, and upgrade its IT systems. A key initiative has been integrating Unified Payments Interface (UPI) at the time of booking Speed Post, which would prevent individual post offices from declining digital payments.

One way in which India Post has said it would firm up its domestic mail transmission is by ensuring that mail bags have enough room on flights criss-crossing India. The Hindu had first reported on July 9 India Post’s intention to reserve such “hard blocks” on passenger flights’ spare room in the cargo hold. On July 17, the postal department issued the tender to this effect, inviting airlines to bid for these hard block contracts.

Post offices across the country have also been upgrading their IT system in phases. Apart from accepting UPI in a so-called “collect mechanism”, where a mail article is booked as soon as a UPI request is paid, the new system also includes more fields in tracking, such as the next post office a particular package or letter is headed to while in transmission. 

This new Advanced Postal Technology (APT) system has been rolled out in some of the major metro cities, such as Delhi and Chennai. Large parts of Mumbai will transition on August 4, the posts department said. In Delhi, over a dozen post offices were upgraded last month, and over 400 post offices did not accept bookings on Saturday as they also undertook the upgrades. Over 86,000 post offices have been upgraded to the new systems so far, representing over half the postal network in India.

“The APT application is designed to offer an enhanced user experience, faster service delivery, and a more customer-friendly interface, reflecting our unwavering commitment to delivering smarter, efficient, and future-ready postal operations,” the Ministry of Communications said in a statement. 

Chandra Sekhar Pemmasani, the Minister of State for Communications, reviewed some of the upgradation work earlier this week, where postal officials said that APT was “designed to introduce real-time track and trace capabilities, customised services for bulk customers, electronic proof of delivery, OTP-based authentication, digital payments, and open API integration,” according to another statement.

Post department officials have also touted other upgrades to come in the following months. Two officials told The Hindu that the department was working on an email-like system that would allow letters to be redirected seamlessly when addressees shift their residence. The DIGIPIN initiative, which allows for more precise latitude-longitude data in a PIN code, has also been launched this year.



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